Organizations are becoming increasingly sensitive to the issues surrounding regulatory compliance, data management, and disaster recoverability. In a MICROSOFT Exchange environment, client-side Personal Folder Information Store (PST) files provide a means for end users to create stores of messaging data that is beyond the management ability of an organization's IT staff. The use of these files should be discouraged in a managed environment, especially one that is subject to regulatory compliance rules. To address this issue, it is possible to administratively restrict the use and creation of .pst files. Additionally, several tools are available that allow the programmatic import of existing .pst data into the centralized MICROSOFT Exchange database(s).
Despite these tools, no inventory and analysis tools currently exist that can provide an organization with a useful picture of the amount of data in .pst files and ownership thereof. This information enables planning for a fully centralized messaging data environment. Ownership information also enables an efficient process for importation or other disposition of the existing/legacy .pst data.